I’ve had the domain irishblogs.com for over a decade, since 2004 to be precise. It was, up until very recently, a rather rudimentary link directory. When I first put the site online I used to spend time and energy looking after it, along with many of the other sites I was running at the time. But over time I got busier with other projects and interests and couldn’t spend as much time on some of these side projects.
And so it sat for the last few years gathering virtual dust. Sure, the directory was “active”, but I suspect a lot of the links were dead and I hadn’t done anything to maintain the site in aeons. It was getting traffic, but not a lot.
Fast forward to a few months ago when someone suggested that I repurpose the domain as a forum for Irish bloggers. At the time I liked the idea, but I was busy with other things, so it got put on the long finger. Finally in the last couple of weeks I got around to putting the site up.
It’s now live!
I used to use vBulletin to run forum sites, but XenForo has become a viable alternative in recent years, so I opted to use it for the new iteration of the site. While vBulletin is pretty good out of the box, you have to rely on 3rd party plugins and extensions to get some of the more “social” functionality that you’d expect to find in a site. Also, as vbulletin has been around for a very long time its backend has a lot of clutter. There are features and options in there that probably made sense a long time ago, but these days are probably sort of pointless.
Thanks to Stephen for helping fix up the logo and to Darragh for suggesting I do something with the domain.
If you’re an Irish blogger or are interested in becoming one why not head over to the site and register?
I will give it a whirl.
Also you have too many sections. Reduce to one or two at first to make it look busy then expand 🙂
@Alan – I’ll have a look at the sections later this evening if I get a chance.. What’s there at the moment is more or less based on what people were asking for in the FB Group
M
Is there any seo value anymore in engaging with blogs? Does google still pass on link juice for people who engage properly ?
Rob – if your only motivation to engage with blogs and bloggers is any perceived SEO value then I’d have to wonder about your motivation..